WinWinWiki was started by Curt Beckmann on Wikia Scratchpad, and merged into Appropedia shortly later. Curt writes "Two weeks after starting WinWinWiki, I discovered Appropedia, and I've been so engrossed there that have failed to come back and redirect folks to the dominant wiki in the Sustainable Development and Appropriate Technology space."

The main page is reproduced below:

WinWinWiki is based on the ideas articulated by Robert Wright in his book, Nonzero. In short, Wright shows that humans have an inherent capacity to collaborate to provide mutual benefit, and that this collaboration has been growing in scale throughout history. WinWinWiki seeks to engage the larger community to accelerate this trend. For more discussion, see About WinWinWiki. For a quick glance at all the pages in this wiki, click on the "All Pages" link above.

WinWinWiki provides a forum for translating (typically complex) Desired Outcomes (that is, "win-win" outcomes) into individual actions. Visionaries (like you?) propose ideas on the "New Ideas" page. Over time, Outcomes get categorized in a top down way at . The most interesting ideas are those that, for whatever reason, have not been well addressed by the free market.

WinWinWiki will also support deconstructing each proposed outcome by breaking it into projects, and subsequently breaking each project into a sequence of actions. In addition to the task-by-task deconstruction, WinWinWiki can provide explanatory content and background to provide understanding. The intent is to enable willing lay people to have the information they need to act. Ultimately, all the necessary content will be made available either directly within WinWinWiki, or via link to web sites, organizations or (for copyrighted material) publications.

Desired Outcomes[edit | edit source]

An example of a "desired outcome" and its hierarchy might be a series of articles with a structure like this:

Desired Outcome: World Peace
Analysis 1: UNESCO-based Culture of Peace
Recommended High Level Actions:
  • Understanding, tolerance and solidarity
  • Disarmament, universal & verifiable
  • Democratic governance
  • Free-flowing information
  • Dialogue, Negotiation and the Rule of Law
  • Equal Rights for Women
  • Education for Peace
  • Equitable and sustainable economies

Don't worry! You can propose an idea without breaking it down to this level. The community can work on it.

Note, though, that each of the listed recommended projects above can, over time, be further deconstructed, in some cases down to a level manageable by an individual volunteer. Indeed, "Understanding, tolerance and solidarity" seem better suited for the masses than for bureaucrats. Links to Peace Education organizations and resources would be added by community members, preferrably members of the organizations themselves.

In the example above, you'll notice "Analysis #1". It's quite likely that different schools will make different analyses leading to different project breakdowns. WinWinWiki can and should support multiple points of view. Similarly, groups within the community will promote the same actions for different reasons. Also, different factions may recommend different courses of action to achieve one agreed outcome. That's a good thing. Every member of the community can find the course of action that they support, or propose a new course.

  • If you've got an idea, add it to the "New Ideas" page. Naturally, if you're an advanced contributor, please feel free to create a new page and categorize it as you believe appropriate.
  • If you have domain expertise on a Desired Outcome, please add some content explaining or linking to information that will help us what the next steps are.
  • If you have project management skills, take a look at existing proposed outcomes or project breakdowns, and take a swing at deconstructing them.
  • If you're familiar with a charitable group or other NGO, see if that group's mission is among the proposed outcomes. Add a link (and some discussion context) to appropriate content on the group's site.
  • If you have an idea for how WinWinWiki can be improved, click the discussion tab above and let us know!

Coming soon: a breakdown of needs and priorities by geographical region.

See also:

Vision[edit | edit source]

The vision of WinWinWiki is to engage experts and organizations to build content and tools that will inspire, educate and connect willing lay people to challenges and organizations based on mutual interest.

Background[edit | edit source]

WinWinWiki is based on the ideas articulated by Robert Wright in his book, Nonzero. In short, the key concept in Nonzero is that communities tend to work together to develop "win-win" behaviors, and over time the workable sizes of collaborative communities has grown. Initially collaboration was at the family level, then group, tribe, city-state, nation-state. International win-wins have been developing for at least the last century. Occasionally, such as for certain health threats such as SARS or bird flu, we see nearly worldwide collaboration.

The point is, humanity is not engaged in a purely "zero-sum" / "win-lose" situation. Instead, there are "win-win" (and, yes, "lose-lose") options available. In the long run, groups that find the "win-win" options have an advantage over those groups that pick "win-lose" (end especially "lose-lose") choices.

So there is good evidence that we humans have the capacity to collaborate effectively. We can simply accept that fact, and allow collaboration to progress haphazardly as it has in the past. Or we can choose to collaborate on collaboration!

WinWinWiki makes the latter choice.

An additional aspect of WinWinWiki is the inherent essentially democratic nature of wiki technology. While large scale collaboration has until now been predominantly the purview of political leaders, we now have the opportunity to get involved at every level. And there are some challenges that truly need to be addressed by the masses. How many people might get involved? As a reference point, over 60 million people volunteered their time for one cause or another between September 2004 and September 2005 in the US alone. Once we get organized, we will make a difference!

What sorts of challenges are best addressed by masses of well intentioned lay people? The WinWinWiki answer (or answers) will be developed by consensus. But for sake of discussion, let's consider world peace. Is it simply the responsibility of our elected officials? Is the task of the UN? It's not a simple question. But at least one authoritative breakdown of the challenges of world peace includes mutual understanding between nations as a key goal. That goal is not likely to be addressed effectively at the government level.

The Plan[edit | edit source]

Adademics, philanthropists, philosophers, visionaries, leaders, charitable organizations, experts in relevant fields, skilled and unskilled volunteers will use WinWinWiki as a central point to connect, communicate and discover what matches their situation. In particular, WinWinWiki seeks to empower the that can bring the power of numbers to bear.

At a high level, WinWinWiki community members will invest in articulating yet-to-be-adopted world scale win-win arrangements, situations and outcomes. These desired outcomes can link to analysis (one or more) and recommended high level projects, which will in turn be translated into hands-on actions for various roles (individual volunteers, industrial nations, government entities, NGOs, health professions, pharmaceutical companies, etc), timeframes and relevant organizations, and so on.

Possible examples of win-win outcomes are: sustainable development, the elimination of abject poverty, non-violent dispute / conflict resolution, elimination of terrorism, and expansion of human rights. The full list will be defined by the community. To see the current list and add yours, start by going to WinWinWiki:WinWinOutcomes. If you're not sure where to put your idea, an easier approach is to add the idea to WinWinWiki:WinWinNewIdeas.

Examples[edit | edit source]

Some desirable outcomes might be:

FA info icon.svg Angle down icon.svg Page data
Authors Curt Beckmann, Chris Watkins
License CC-BY-SA-3.0
Language English (en)
Related 0 subpages, 8 pages link here
Aliases Appropedia:About WinWinWiki, About WinWinWiki
Impact 1,025 page views
Created August 22, 2006 by Curt Beckmann
Modified May 7, 2022 by Felipe Schenone
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